Union soldiers marching through Willow Springs in Mississippi had looted one plantation and left virtually nothing. The indignant farmer rode up to Union General A. J. Smith to complain that his men had robbed him of everything he owned. The thieves, he said, belonged to the command of Brigadier General A. J. Smith's division of McClerland's XIII Corps. Smith listened to the man and then asked, "Whose mule is that you rode up on?" When told by the farmer that it was his own, Smith replied, "Well, those men didn't belong to my division at all, because if they were my men they wouldn't even have left you that mule."